Cohen (available in the LOMAP lending
library). If you have any questions about
the process, or if you can’t find someone
to take on the required tasks, please contact the WSBA about our custodianship
program at 800-945-9722, ext. 5949, or
email lomap@wsba.org.

I am working on wrapping up a
law office for a deceased col­
league. She was completely pa­
perless and a professional pass­
word creator, but she did not
have a plan or write down her
passwords to find (trust me — I
have hunted!). What do I do to
get into her electronic files?

This will happen more and more as law
offices tech up without planning. Call the
different vendors for any programs she
used, because some of them may be web-based and accessible on other devices.
There may be some permissions issues
and proof you need to supply to those
vendors to show you are legitimately trying to access this lawyer’s files for beneficial purposes.

If there are files saved on the actual
devices, take them to a computer security expert who could determine what
would need to be done and hopefully
access the data. Different levels of password protection have varying levels of
security and ability to recover from. In
some circumstances, it is just a BIOS or
CMOS password and your computer consultant could remove a small battery to
reset the settings, or she could take out
the hard drive and hook it up to another
machine, or run a password crack against
it to open it up. The computer security
person might be able to “break into” the
computer and access most or all of the
information. Similarly, you may need to
prove your colleague is deceased and
you are legitimately assisting the law office and her family with the wind-up. NWL

CHARITY ANASTASIO served as the
practice management advisor for the
WSBA Law Office Management Assistance Program. She attended UW as
an undergrad and Seattle University
for her law degree. Send your questions to lomap@wsba.org.